Firehouse Culture and Other Firefighter Issues Examined During Recent Webcasts

Two new TargetSolutions-sponsored webinars, each about an hour in length, are now available for viewing and touch on creating a positive firehouse culture as well as best practices for fire-based EMS.

The first webinar, Fully Involved: Creating a Culture That Works, highlights the essentials of effective leadership and how to establish a positive firehouse culture within the service.

Delivered by FireEngineering.com and presented by Captain Mark vonAppen of the Palo Alto Fire Department (Calif.), the 50-minute webinar focuses on creating an “us against the world” group mentality through camaraderie, effort and hard work. The son of a professional football coach, vonAppen draws on his upbringing in the sports world and applies those same principles to the fire service. Rebuking the notion that ruling with an iron first will create culture, vonAppen instead focuses on teamwork in its simplest form.

“The thing we came up with as a group in the firehouse I worked in was the Big 4,” said vonAppen. “Do your job like a professional, treat people right, give all-out effort and have an all-in attitude. You see how they all interrelate.”

To view a recorded version of this webcast from FireEngineering.com, please click here.

The second webinar, Best Practices in Fire-Based EMS, is presented by Fire Chief Gary Ludwig, MS, EMT-P, of the Champaign Fire Department (Ill.). Delivered by Firehouse.com, the hour-long webinar explores best practices for fire departments while embracing the EMS mission. Examining statistics provided by the U.S. Fire Administration and National Fire Protection Association over a 30-year period from 1985 to 2015, Ludwig points to the tanking rate of fires and the vastly increasing number of EMS calls.

In 2015, EMS calls were up 230 percent from 1985 and during that same period, fires dropped 45 percent. In fact, only 4 percent of all fire department responses in 2015 were for fires.

“If you think about your own departments, if you do any form of EMS, whether it’s transport and first response, probably the vast majority, about 60 percent of your calls, are EMS-related calls,” said Ludwig. “Most fire departments pump more oxygen than water. A majority of what we do is EMS.”

To view a recorded version of this webcast from Firehouse.com, please click here.

Is your department looking for training in EMS or leadership? To learn what TargetSolutions can do for your agency, please contact us today at (800) 840-8046.